A Poem Dedicated to Annie Dillard by Robert Minhinnick

Annie Dillard and the Snake

Poem text of Annie Dillard and the Snake Late October, yet warm in the Pennsylvania woods. Maybe the fallen leaves are hickory or hemlock or sugar maple, but a snake has decided to coil itself on the track. Of course it has sensed the soft detonations of our steps as it seeks return to slumber, and yes, she is pretty sure of the species: for her unsurprising and almost venomless. Just don’t let it bite you, is her only advice, as it lies there in the mulch like a mandala. Though a mosquito might do you more harm. But she isn’t a doctor or even an ecologist. She is a writer, with a Pulitzer prize for the book she autographed “with good cheer”. And I remember her lean hands and shock of pale hair and thankfulness to be exactly where she is this afternoon, deep in the woods, under the hemlock and the hickory and the sugar maple, communing with an eastern garter snake striped like a college football scarf. 5.10.25

Author Note

When I think of the USA, it concerns the kindness of strangers. Those people who organized literary and music events, some of which included myself.

For example, Kevin Dixon Gilligan who telephoned Southerndown in south Wales in 1984 from Boston when I was working for the Glamorgan Heritage Coast. Together with his partner Margot de Chatelaine, they arranged performances for me from Oregon to New Mexico to Indiana and all over New England. All through their magazine, Keltica: the Inter-Cetltic Journal.

Martin Mitchell found one of my books in New York in 1985 and wrote, inviting me to a host of events he was organizing, via his magazine, Pivot. These became regular autumn US tours.

Margot Farrington, poet, and her partner, Tony Martin, painter and light artist, planned events in New England and New York.

Forerunner to this was a major tour, organized by what was Yr Academi Gymreig, commencing at the Harbourfront Festival in Toronto in 1982, followed by several events in the US. For much of this I was accompanied by Gillian Clarke.

This involved my only meeting with Annie Dillard, who I think organised a college event. Annie seemed very much at home with the snake. Subsequently reading her work, I’ve learned she simply loved life and was in awe of its abundance – see her extraordinary essays, ‘Fecundity’ in ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’ and ‘Living like Weasels’ in Teaching a Stone to Swim. She writes, indeed lives, with extraordinary empathy for the natural world.

After this tour I wrote an essay for Poetry Wales, titled ‘Letter from a Far Country’, also the title of a celebrated poetry collection by Gillian. This can be read in Poetry Wales in an issue from the mid 1980s.

Descriptions of the tours can be found in ‘Reading the Zones’  and ‘Positively Fink Street’, essays in my Watching the Fire-Eater published by Seren.